Richard Greene
Boxing the Compass
Poetry English-Language
Photo: Linda Kooluris Dobbs
Richard Greene,
Cobourg (Ontario),
Boxing the Compass.
(Signal Editions, an imprint of Véhicule Press; distributed by LitDistCo)
(ISBN 978-1-55065-259-8)
Biography
Richard Greene has played numerous roles in Canada’s literary community – poet, biographer, critic and professor of English at the University of Toronto. He edited Graham Greene: A Life in Letters (2007) which was highly acclaimed by the British and Canadian literary press, and he was recently commissioned by Time Warner to write a biography of British poet Edith Sitwell (in press). He is a contributing editor to Books in Canada and his reviews of contemporary poetry have been published in numerous journals in Canada and abroad – as has his own poetry. Boxing the Compass is his third collection of poetry. Originally from St. John’s, Nfld., Richard Greene is currently living in Cobourg, Ont.
Jury's comment
Richard Greene’s Boxing the Compass leaves us feeling unmoored, adrift across time and voice. The matchless long poem at its heart pulls us back to our always-moving selves, on an always-moving earth. We follow him in his offbeat but strangely familiar travels.
Excerpt
(Reproduced with permission)
" Great-grandfather,
whaler out of Nantucket,
the harder sort
who threw the harpoon,
drew warm blood,
made huge death on the open sea.
Came home one year
to find his land fenced
for ecclesiastical uses,
tore it all down,
told the priest to go to hell,
and would do his own praying
after that."
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